New Legal Threat To GMail

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Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday September 13, 2005 @01:36AM from the stuff-you-can't-make-up dept.

wellington writes "Google is facing a renewed threat of legal action from a company that claims to own the intellectual property rights to its GMail e-mail service. Independent International Investment Research, a British company that specialises in research and has several leading City investment banks as clients, argues that it launched "G-Mail web based email" in May 2002."

23 of 526 comments (clear)

Yeah, but... by killmenow · 2005-09-13 01:38 · Score: 5, Funny

Google's is called GMail BETA
G? by SuperJason · 2005-09-13 01:39 · Score: 5, Funny

So they claim that they own the G?
1. Re:G? by Pius+II. · 2005-09-13 02:09 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  The German telecom already owns the T. They sued everybody who had a T in their trademark or web adress. That includes owners of domains such as "t-beutel.de" ("tea-bag.de"). They also have a trademark on the colour magenta (yes, the M in CMYK) and have been known to sue people using it in advertisements (a common practice for magazines where you pay per colour used).
Fair's fair... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-09-13 01:39 · Score: 5, Funny

Google should give them 50% of the profits from GMail.

Let's see, a free email service generating $0 profit. 50% of $0 equals $0.

Settled.
1. Re:Fair's fair... by Professeur+Shadoko · 2005-09-13 01:41 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  zero ?
  
  and what about the ads ?
  
  free != zero-profit.
Already done by Dopefish · 2005-09-13 01:40 · Score: 5, Funny

I've actually already patented the use of single letters in front of "Mail", so they're both screwing me over.

AMAil
BMail
CMail
DMail
etc.

ALL MINE!

Yeah, I'm Amazon.com. This whole "Dopefish" thing is just an alias.....
Intellectual property rights to GMail? by Itchy+Rich · 2005-09-13 01:40 · Score: 5, Insightful

Surely this is just trademark infringment at most. The summary seems to infer that general IP rights to the service are involved, rather than just the name.
Attack ONE! by screevo · 2005-09-13 01:40 · Score: 5, Funny

Steve Ballmer hires a minion to launch the first volley in the Internet War of 2005
Sounds legitimate by brucmack · 2005-09-13 01:40 · Score: 5, Insightful

Sounds like they have a legitimate claim here... They did launch a web-based email service called GMail well before Google. The fact that they've been negotiating with Google for the past 15 months would indicate that they also brought their claim to Google early on. I wonder why Google hasn't just paid them to license the name? Wouldn't they rather use some of their excess money reserves than risk a tarnished name?
1. Re:Sounds legitimate by kubrick · 2005-09-13 01:59 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  It's the X Window System, not X-Windows as you claim.
  
  --
  deus does not exist but if he does
Aaarrgggh! by gowen · 2005-09-13 01:41 · Score: 5, Informative

intellectual property rights to its GMail e-mail service.
Look, if you keep using the catch-all phrase "Intellectual Property" to cover distinct ideas, no one will ever get smart about the differences. This is about a trade mark "GMail" -- only the *name* is the important thing here.

And they did register that trademark long in advance of Google.

--
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
1. Re:Aaarrgggh! by AKAImBatman · 2005-09-13 02:12 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  try marketing your Micro-soft operating system and see how long that "but we had a hyphen!" argument holds up.
  
  You might be able to get away with it if you use significantly different styling for the logos. e.g. Microcenter could cause brand confusion if they styled their brands in such a way as to make the consumer believe that they were a Microsoft company.
  
  However, a judge would probably find that you were attempting to cause brand confusion based on the shear popularity of the Microsoft mark.
  
  In this case, however, my understanding is that Google didn't learn of the mark until a month after they launched their service. In addition, the two services operate in different markets. So Google has a strong case in that the two services are unlikely to be confused, and that Google has been using the mark in good faith.
  
  Doesn't matter. The Firebird database is a niche item, but they'd still have won a trademark case with Mozilla Firebird.
  
  I wish people would stop repeating nonsense like this. As with many legal threats, there was no court case. Since there was no court case, there was no determination of brand validity. Since there was no determination of brand validity, there is no legal precident steming from the issue.
  
  The most that could come out of it is that if Firebird (database) ever went to court over their name again, they could claim that Mozilla decided to settle because they believed in the validity of Firebird's claims. (In reality Mozilla just didn't want any trouble, so they picked a truely unique name.)
  
  --
  Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Vague Summary by aussie_a · 2005-09-13 01:42 · Score: 5, Insightful

Wow, yet another vague summary, that can definitely be misleading. Having first read the summary, I thought it was about a company claiming to have created the code and/or services of Gmail only to have google steal it. But no, the company is merely sueing for trademark infringement. Way to go slashdot! The word "TRADEMARK" could have been mentioned somewhere in the article, would have cleared it up a tiny bit. But I guess Slashdot gets more pageviews (and ad views) by confusing its readers.
rumors by Anonymous Coward · 2005-09-13 01:42 · Score: 5, Funny

I heard that Google is planning on calling it's personalized homepage GSpot...
1. Re:rumors by earthloop · 2005-09-13 01:55 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  They wouldn't do that. Nobody would be able to find it!
Re:Why so long by Enigma_Man · 2005-09-13 01:43 · Score: 5, Informative

If you RTFA, you will see that the company is a small company, and was involved in communication with google over the span of 15 months or so, before jumping right into litigation. That sounds like the right thing to do, IMO, rather than just sue immediately. The company is a small one, and they say they don't have the big money that Google has to bring a law suit just to protect their name.

-Jesse

--
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
From TFA... by Foobar+of+Borg · 2005-09-13 01:45 · Score: 5, Insightful

He [Mr. Smith] said he was "reluctantly" considering taking legal action against Google, which could involve his family trust selling shares in the group to fund the claim.
"I feel it is up to me as the founder and the major shareholder. We're not going to sit on the sidelines while a company uses our intellectual property rights," he said. "We're confident that we have the funding available to us and we're girding our loins," he said.
As much as they may have a case, I always find the "we don't want to, but they are forcing us" argument funny. Not because of the company itself, but because I can imagine some IP lawyers saying, "Yesss! They are being forccced to! Hisss!" as their forked tongues flick from their mouths and they rub thier greedy paws together with reptilian glint in their eyes.

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Similar to the upcoming US election results
gmail.com by bookemdano63 · 2005-09-13 01:48 · Score: 5, Insightful

But they never bother spending the $10 to register gmail.com?
What!?! by ifwm · 2005-09-13 01:57 · Score: 5, Funny

"We're not going to sit on the sidelines while a company uses our intellectual property rights"

Has anyone even heard of these idiots?

YOU PUT A G IN FRONT OF MAIL.

Don't try to act like it's the light bulb, you snaggletoothed limey.
In the credits at the end of the lawsuit... by mikael · 2005-09-13 01:59 · Score: 5, Funny

This lawsuit has been brought to the attention of your lawyers by the letter G, and the numbers 0 and 5.

--
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Repeat after me: There's no such thing as "IP" by Anonymous Coward · 2005-09-13 02:04 · Score: 5, Interesting

There is nothing called "Intellectual Property".

Either you say:
Trademark
Copyright
Patent

But "Intellectual Property" is not a term you can use intelligently, only as a way to further the company propaganda-machine. This example clearly shows it is not suitable for intelligent readership. I heard this from RMS last time he visited Norway.
The letter 'G' by Baric · 2005-09-13 02:09 · Score: 5, Informative

'mail' is a generic term. G is just a letter, devoid of any meaning beyond a possible abbreviation. In this case, it's a legitimate abbreviation for 'Google'. This reminds me of IBM trying to trademark the number 2 to stop vendors from making PS/2 compatible computers called "PC/2" They lost. Intel tried to trademark the number 386 & 486. They also lost. I'm not a google apologist or anything, but I think the litigants don't have a case
Re:Google owns the GMAIL mark, at least in the US by canajin56 · 2005-09-13 04:57 · Score: 5, Informative

Here is the UK trademark website. If you search it, you'll find the earliest application is from Google, Inc. on April 14th, 2004. Karen Griffith applied on October 4th, 2004, almost half a year later.

So there you go. In the USA, Google applied first, and with an earlier date of first use to boot. Google quickly followed up and applied in the UK as well. These guys, supposedly BASED in the UK, didn't bother for another 6 months. Further, their only reference in their UK application was to their US application. If that application was rejected, the UK one will be too, I would imagine.

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